Advocacy groups and legislators both are mobilizing against the Department of Education’s proposed changes to Title IX, through submitting comments to the register and drafting legislation. Meanwhile, a stop-gap measure was passed to keep the government from shutting down until December 21st, but it doesn’t look like we’re any closer to passing the remaining funding bills in time. Plus, in this edition, you’ll find updates on our efforts on Title IX, our upcoming LAD, and a Call to Action to support employer supported student loan assistance.

To view previous editions and to subscribe to our newsletter, check out our Legislative Letters blog! If you have questions, suggestions, or are interested in contributing to the newsletter, or would like to be a part of the Legislative Concerns Committee, please contact the Director of Legislative Affairs, Kaylynne Glover, at legislative@nagps.org. To provide feedback on the newsletter, you can also follow the link at the end of the Letter to fill out a quick survey. To find out more about the ratified NAGPS Legislative and Advocacy Platforms, be sure to follow these links.

Updates

TITLE IX

We are preparing an official statement in response to the Department of Education’s proposed Title IX rules. This statement will be used to help us draft the NAGPS comment as well as provide guidance to help you draft your own. We are also preparing statements that you can use to contact your legislators on this issue, both requesting them to put pressure on the Department of Education as well as to co-sponsor and support legislation that prioritizes student safety.

SPRING SUMMIT and LAD

The 2019 Spring Summit and Legislative Action Days organization are underway. We are using the feedback that we received from this last session to guide our planning, and we encourage you to contact us if you have thoughts regarding the LAD. The tentative dates are March 9-11, so we encourage you to reserve that weekend to travel to DC, learn about issues that affect graduate education, and meet with your Congress members. Like last time, we will be offering alternative methods to participate if you are unable to travel, so stay tuned for that information.

CALL to ACTION

Congress is currently poised to take a step towards improving the student loan situation, but NAGPS needs everyone’s help in making it happen. In both the House and the Senate there are currently proposals to extend employer-provided education assistance to repaying student loans. This means that, in addition to helping to provide tax-exempt tuition assistance to employees currently taking classes, they could also provide a tax-exempt contribution towards student loans. Not all graduate and professional programs are funded, and even for those that are, stipends are often insufficient to support us and our families. Furthermore, we all made it through an undergraduate degree that likely involved significant amounts of loans. As a result, the average graduate student is $70,000 in debt, with many programs having a debt load of more than $100,000. To cap it off, these loans are typically at higher interest rates than those provided to undergraduate students.

These bills would help us pay off those loans. This is why NAGPS supports the passage of this language and encourages you to contact your legislators in support of these bills. The Senate bill, S. 796, already has 23 cosponsors, and the House bill, H.R. 795, already has 129 cosponsors! We need your help to get these bills for the rest of the way. Check which of your legislators are already cosponsored the bill. Thank the ones that have and ask the ones that have not to support them. There is a very good chance that we can get this language included in the broader oversight and tax package working its way through Congress. Let’s make this happen!

ON A PERSONAL NOTE

Lastly, this Legislative Letter will be a particularly short one because yours truly has injured herself (carpal tunnel from the repeated stress movements of data entry, thank you, graduate school) and has express orders to minimize contact with a computer. Nevertheless, I have an obligation to provide you with the most important information I have, even if it is largely delivered through voice dictation. A big thank you to Jack Reid of MIT for his willingness to step up and draft the Call to Action above. It is a pleasure to serve when I have such an amazing support team.

Title IX Protection and Campus Safety

There are two pieces of legislation that have been proposed that would protect Title IX from the proposed rulemaking in the Department of Education, both proposed by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA). The first is the Title IX Protection Act (H.R. 4030 [115]) that codifies several of the rules that Secretary DeVos is attempting to replace. It was first proposed last year when the interim Title IX rules had been released and currently has 41 Democratic co-sponsors and is supported by several advocacy groups. The second is the HALT Act (H.R. 6464 [115]), which, while newer, has bipartisan support. This would allow institutions to be both sued by students and fined by the ED for failure to protect students.

A third bill in Congress, the Campus Accountability and Safety Act (H.R. 1949 [115]), would expand the Clery Act to require institutions to be transparent about actions they are taking to address sexual misconduct. It also requires the Department of Education to release regular statistics about campus relationship and sexual violence. It currently has 31 co-sponsors and, while primarily Democrat-led, it does have some bipartisan support.

Monthly Budget Review for November 2018, CBO. The federal budget deficit was $303 billion for the first two months of the fiscal year 2019, CBO estimates, $102 billion more than the deficit recorded during the same period last year.

CONTACT US

ABOUT US

The vision of the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students (NAGPS) is to be a nationally representative and internationally recognized Association that advocates for institutional and structural changes to improve graduate and professional education in the United States.

The mission of NAGPS is to:
DEVELOP, SUSTAIN, & EXPAND a member network that connects graduate and professional students across the United States to facilitate the sharing of information, resources, and best practices.
EMPOWER our members to successfully serve their graduate-professional student constituents.
AMPLIFY students’ voices to campus, local, state, and federal policymakers.